I'm grateful for the disciple who asked, "Lord, teach us to pray," (Luke 11:1), for he gave voice to a need experienced by Jesus' disciples of all times and places.

Joining with the disciples in asking Jesus to teach us to pray implies our dependence. In other words, we can't pray rightly unless the Lord teaches us. The Apostle Paul expressed our problem succinctly: "we do not know how to pray as we should" (Romans 8:26). Only someone from heaven can teach us how to communicate with "Our Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 6:5).

To say "Lord, teach us to pray" also assumes a sincere desire to learn. It's one thing to say you want to pray and another to be willing to learn. Within every Spirit-indwelled human is the yearning to converse with the heavenly Father. In fact, the New Testament tells us twice, "Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!'" (Galatians 4:6; see also Romans 8:15).

Third, to ask the Lord, "teach us to pray" implies growth and process. The disciples didn't learn all they needed to know about prayer in one lesson, and neither do we. Although Jesus directly answered their request here, this passage does not contain all he taught them about prayer. For instance, in Luke 18:1, ". . . He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart." Later he would teach them more about fervency in prayer by his example in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:39-46).

The point? Don't be tempted to think, "I just don't have it" when it comes to prayer. If you were to begin the study of a foreign language, it would almost certainly take years of learning and regular practice in conversation before you'd be comfortable and articulate with it. Why then should we think we ought to learn the language of prayer in a short time?

Jesus' answer to the disciples' request is immediate and straightforward in "The Lord's Prayer," or "The Model Prayer." Just as an older brother might bend down and quietly instruct a younger sibling about what to say as they are standing before their father, in the few lines of Luke 11:2-4 Jesus tells us what to say when we talk with God.

Each line (such as in verse 2, "Your kingdom come") is a model or example of the things we should pray.

For instance, "Lord, I long to see your kingdom come in my daughter, that she would submit to you as her King and Savior. And may your kingdom begin to come through Todd and Tara as they share the gospel of Jesus with Muslims on the mission field."

Even without using the exact phrases of the Model Prayer, the same meaning may be prayed. Prayers for the blessing of God upon the work of your church can be another, more localized and personal way of saying to the Lord, "your kingdom come."

Having said that, allow me to step back from the Model Prayer for an even wider view. When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, he did not say something like, "Say whatever you feel, and it will be pleasing to God."

Instead, on both occasions when he taught the Model Prayer, God the Son verbalized specific instructions. These words of education are God-breathed. Or to put it another way, we are taught how to pray by the Word of God.

"If we pray rightly," said the fourth-century theologian, Augustine, ". . . we say nothing but what is already contained in the Lord's Prayer."

Jesus continues his primer on prayer in the succeeding verses of Luke 11, by teaching us about persistence and the assurance of answered prayer: "So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it will be opened" (Luke 11:9-10).

Have you given up asking for things? Unless you are convinced they are outside the will of God, and you can fit them under one of the requests found in the Model Prayer, let Jesus teach you to keep on asking, seeking, and knocking in prayer. Meditate on and pray through every part of what he teaches here about prayer.

Prayer is more than saying the right words or putting them in the correct order or repeating them the certain number of times. Prayer, like worship, must be done in both "spirit and truth" (John 4:24). So to pray, even using the words of the Model Prayer, apart from the help of the Holy Spirit is like trying to fly a plane with one wing.

If your prayer life is one-winged, just spinning around in boring, earthbound circles, perhaps it's because you haven't been asking for the Holy Spirit and his help in prayer. Our heavenly Father, by his Spirit, helps us—we who are sinful, selfish, and mortal—to speak with him. He opens our eyes to lines of Scripture we should talk about. He opens our minds to pray more in accord with how the Bible says we ought to pray. He opens our hearts so that we feel what we pray instead of merely muttering lifeless phrases into the air.

A great man of prayer as well as the pulpit, Charles Spurgeon said, "We must all feel that if we are to pray aright, we must be taught of God, by his Holy Spirit."

This article was adapted from one that originally appeared in the November/December 2000 issue of Moody Magazine.